Disclosure generally pertinent to the context of the present invention is contained in the following related application having the same assignee as the present application: "High-speed Video Frame Buffer Using Single Port Memory Chips," Ser. No. 60/015,349, filed on Apr. 12, 1996. This related application is hereby incorporated herein by reference.
Preferred embodiments of the invention are designed to process OpenGL graphics requests in lieu of processing by the host-computer's graphics rendering device. OpenGL is a vendor-neutral application programming interface (API) for developing 2D and 3D graphics applications. As the OpenGL API is consistent across vendor platforms, OpenGL based applications are highly portable to a variety of computing environments. Consequently, the present invention is applicable to a diverse range of computing environments. OpenGL offers a range of graphics features from rendering simple points, lines, or polygons, to very complex texture-mapped and lighted curved surfaces, and provides many functions for creating and manipulating complex images having lighting and shading, hidden surface removal, alpha blending, anti-aliasing, and texture mapping. OpenGL is derived from the IRIS Graphics Library, which was developed in 1982 by Silicon Graphics to provide a graphics development environment for their computer systems. OpenGL is defined and released by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board, whose members include DEC, Evans & Sutherland, IBM, Intel, Intergraph, Microsoft, and Silicon Graphics.
Additional background material generally pertinent to the context of the present invention is also contained in the following related documents: The OpenGL Technical Library, published by Addison-Wesley, which contains The OpenGL Programming Guide (ISBN: 0-201-63276-4) and The OpenGL Reference Manual (ISBN: 0-201-63276-4); Mark Segal, Kurt Akeley, The OpenGL Graphics System: A Specification, Version 1.0 et seq., Silicon Graphics Incorporated, 1992; Microsoft Windows NT Device Driver Kit, Microsoft Corporation, 1992; Microsoft OpenGL Installable Client Driver Specification, Microsoft Corporation; Intergraph Software Design Description for the EDGE III Display Driver, Intergraph Corporation, October, 1993; Intergraph EDGE III Architectural Specification; Intergraph Corporation, 1993; EDGE III OpenGL Client Driver Design Specification, Intergraph Corporation, 1994; Intergraph Lynx Architectural Specification, Intergraph Corporation, 1994; Lynx Software Design Specification, Intergraph Corporation, 1994; Lynx Interface Specification, Intergraph Corporation, 1994; Foley van Dam, Computer Graphics Principles and Practice, Addison-Wesley publ. (1996).